Saturday 6/1/24
Yesterday's mail--which I got this morning--had a letter from the Department of Revenue saying they're going to be taking money out of my bank account. This is all because of the fuck up at The Wall Street Journal. Entirely their error, and entirely my problem. My ongoing, endless problem. You have these massive...well...I'm not even going to say the term here, I'll leave the full documentation for another entry...let's just say, by way of biggest understatement, "not so great people" in editorial there...then I get all of this shit.
There's now an agent that's been assigned to me by the state of Massachusetts for the collection of $16,000 that I don't owe. So this morning I've left a voicemail with this agent, and written yet another letter. I have a letter from the IRS saying I don't owe anything, and that the issue is resolved, but this has yet to take hold with the state of Massachusetts, despite me having sent the state a photocopy of the IRS's letter and filled out an Abatement form. That's what I do on a Saturday morning--while I'm working so I can afford to get food--because of these people.
At this point you'd think I was Robert Mitchum in Thunder Road trying to outrun the revenuers.
Worked on two stories--"A Thing for Cucumbers" and "By Water."
I'm just about done with this essay on 1931's Dracula. It got a bit longer today--to 2900 words. Right now, I'm thinking it will be the first work in And the Skin Was Gone: Essays on Works of Horror Art. I know it said "Terror" before. I have most of this book written. I was thinking I might do something on John Atkinson Grimshaw, but I already have three essays in the book on paintings, so that's less likely. I am, in effect, "commissioning" pieces to myself on additional subjects for this, Keats' "La Belle Dame sans Merci" and Richard Middleton's "The Ghost Ship" among them.
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